Who are the Pennsylvania Dutch?

Sheriff Gideon Stoltz, the main character in my historical mysteries, is Pennsylvania Dutch. What does that mean? 

The word “Dutch” seems to signify Holland, or the Netherlands. Five hundred years ago, it referred to both Dutch and German peoples. 

Beginning in the late 1600s, thousands of German-speaking people came to Pennsylvania, largely because the state, founded by the Quaker William Penn as a “holy experiment,” allowed its residents to practice their own religions freely. German and Swiss immigrants were fleeing from warfare and persecution in their homeland. Some had money for their Atlantic passage, with enough left over to buy land or set up a business. Others arrived as indentured servants. They flooded in through the port of Philadelphia. By 1790, a third of Pennsylvania’s population was of German origin. This migration continued well into the 1800s. 

While they may have arrived as Palatinates, Hanoverians, Alsatians, Hessians, or Swiss, they were labeled simply “Dutch” by their new neighbors. Over time, they became known as “the Pennsylvania Dutch.”

PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN FRAKTUR ART FROM 1788. CREDIT: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

They were Lutherans, German Reformed, and members of pietist sects like Mennonites, Amish, Dunkards, and Schwenkfelders – a “wide variety of confessions and creeds,” says one scholar. They spoke many dialects of German. Sometimes they had difficulty understanding each other. 

Most were farmers. They sought out lands with fertile limestone soils, which they knew how to farm efficiently, by rotating different crops annually and by spreading lime and tons of manure produced through their livestock-based agriculture. They believed that the tiller of the soil, more than any other person, enjoyed “Gottes segen,” or God’s blessing. 

The Pennsylvania Dutch were also blacksmiths, carpenters, craftsmen, artists, storekeepers, teachers, ministers, doctors, soldiers, politicians. During the first half of the nineteenth century, six out of ten Pennsylvania governors were of German descent. These energetic, dynamic people (some proudly called themselves obsenaat, meaning “obstinate” or “stubborn”) helped shape the culture, politics, and economy of Pennsylvania and the other Mid-Atlantic states into which they spread. 

At first, they spoke German, learning enough English to trade and get along with their neighbors. They printed newspapers, almanacs, and books in Hoch Deutsch, or High German. Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch (Pennsylvania German) was a spoken tongue only. Schoolchildren were taught in German. 

Why did I make my main character Gideon Stoltz a Pennsylvania Dutchman? Why did I plunk him down in a fictional back-country settlement populated with clannish Scotch-Irish residents, where he ended up after riding west from his birthplace and home in the Dutch country of southeastern Pennsylvania? 

I wanted him to be different. I wanted him to be an “other.” Tension propels fiction, and I wanted the difficulties of being a stranger in his adopted community to sometimes stand in the way of his solving crimes. Gideon is married to True Burns Stoltz. The Burns family is Scotch-Irish, and True’s father and brothers enjoy mocking Gideon for his Dutch accent and speech patterns. Other citizens in Colerain County view him with suspicion. 

Were Germans discriminated against in central Pennsylvania? Probably sometimes, and probably not as often as some of the scenes in my mysteries suggest. I’ve read early accounts of Dutch folks grousing when “English” youths tried to court their pretty daughters. One Scotch-Irish farmer stated that, when he died, he wanted his body buried on the property line between his land and that of a neighboring German family to “keep the damn Dutch off my ground.” 

When doing research for my mysteries, I read many books about Pennsylvania Germans. A good one is Foreigners in their Own Land: Pennsylvania Germans in the Early Republic, by Steven Nolt (Penn State Press, 2002). A Pennsylvania German Dictionary, by Eugene Stine, published by the Pennsylvania German Society in Kutztown, lets me translate words that Gideon sometimes utters or thinks. 

I also have a friend to call on when I want a phrase or sentence translated into Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch. Doug Madenford teaches German and history at a central Pennsylvania high school. He’s a fluent Deitsch speaker, a talented musician, a writer and communicator about all things Dutch. Check out his PA Dutch 101 website, podcasts, and videos HERE. 

As Doug often puts it, closing an email or wrapping up one of his informative and frequently hilarious “Ask a Dutchman” videos, “Mach’s gut!” Literally, “Make it good!” Or, as the rest of us might say, “Have a great day.”